This morning we continue our journey through Acts, seeing how the early church did things, and what we might learn from that for our own church life. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve had a merry old time thinking about caring and sharing – lovely affirming stuff. This week, however, it gets a bit more prickly. This week we’re thinking about being a disturbing church.
It’s a great word, isn’t it, “disturbing”. Even the word itself somehow is disturbing in itself.
It has a range of meanings. At the basic level, it’s just another word for an interruption. Something that disturbs stops something else that was already going on. Often, though, something that disturbs doesn’t just interrupt, but it throws something out of balance, it tips it over, knocks it out of equilibrium. Even more than this, there’s usually an emotional meaning as well, something that disturbs makes us uncomfortable, upset, maybe even angry.
So, I guess my first job this morning is justify the suggestion that church should be disturbing. That word doesn’t appear in the Bible readings we had this morning, and in fact doesn’t appear very often in the New Testament at all, so where is my justification for saying that the early church was disturbing?
Well I’m going to start by doubling down and suggesting that not only was the early church disturbing, so was Jesus. Again the word “disturbing” only appears once in the gospels, so this might seem to be a stretch, but bear with me.
That one appearance in the gospels is in Matthew 2. Jesus has been born, and the star has appeared in the East, and the wise ones have followed it to Jerusalem. They go to the palace and ask about the new King that has just been born. The current King, Herod, is not to impressed by this, and what does Matthew write?
“When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.”
Right from the beginning of his life, Jesus was disturbing people. As we read through the accounts of his life and teaching, it seems to me that “disturbing” is a great summary. From calling people to leave their livelihoods and follow him, to upsetting the religious teachers, to challenging the priorities of the people in his teaching, all the way to the cross and especially in his resurrection, Jesus disturbed people, the status quo, and received wisdom. He was and is the great disturber.
I would like to suggest that he expected his followers to follow his example. On the night before he died, he went to the Garden of Gethsamane to pray. We heard a part of that prayer in our reading from John’s eye witness account of Jesus’ life. We hear him pray for his followers, because the world is going to hate them. The world is going to hate them, because they have Jesus’ word and live by it. Jesus doesn’t ask his Father to take them out of the world, but to protect them as they remain in it. He fully expects those who follow him, and his teaching, to be hated by the world, because they disturb the world’s way of looking at things, the values of the world, the comfort of the world.
We see this “disturbing” effect of the church in the world in a number of place in Acts, the accounts of the life of the early church. We read about one this morning. Even before we get to this morning’s reading, however, it has already started. At the beginning of Acts chapter 4 we read this:
“The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John and, because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. But many who heard the message believed; so the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand.”
And then in today’s reading we see another example of the early believers disturbing things. They are still teaching people, but more than this, people are being healed as they pray for them. The religious leaders are mighty disturbed – they are angry and jealous, so they arrest the apostles and put them in jail. I love the next bit. God just sends an angel to let them out again, and they go straight back to preaching. And then in the morning the guards come to fetch them for trial, but they’re not there. Can you imagine the scene in the council chamber – the whole Sanhedrin gathered together to condemn the Christians, and the captain of the guard coming in and saying “they’ve gone, we can’t find them”, scratching their heads, looking a bit daft. Then someone coming in and telling everyone that the “prisoners” have gone back to preaching!
So, they drag them in and give them a stern talking to, threaten them even. And what do Peter and his friends say? “We must obey God rather than human beings.” They aren’t going to stop disturbing things, Jesus didn’t, and they’re not going to either. They are going to obey their Lord’s command and follow their Lord’s example.
Later on in Acts we read more examples of this. As Paul goes around teaching and preaching, planting churches, there are riots and demonstrations against him and his teaching in a number of cities. As we know the early believers were widely persecuted. This was because they disturbed the “way things were”. They disturbed the religious and secular authorities. They acknowledged Jesus as Lord rather than Caesar as Lord. They wouldn’t conform to the religious and moral pluralism of the time. They were distinctive, and made absolute truth claims that offended and disturbed people, as they followed Jesus’ example.
So, it seems fairly clear to me that Jesus was disturbing, and so was the early church.
So, what about us, are we disturbing? For me the question isn’t, should we be disturbing? Rather the question is, “Who or what should we be disturbing, and how?”
Well, if we’re following Jesus’ example in being disturbing, it seems to me that we should be disturbing the same things he did. So who did Jesus disturb?
Firstly, he disturbed his disciples. He called them away from the lives that they were living, to follow him. He taught them things that turned the thinking upside down and inside out. He taught them to forgive those who hurt them, to love their enemies, to trust in God when things were difficult, to see things in a new way. At times Jesus’ teaching was so disturbing that many of his followers left him. In summary, we should expect our lives to be disturbed by following Jesus. I would go so far to say that if following Jesus doesn’t disturb our lives, or make us uncomfortable in any way, then we’re probably not actually following Jesus.
Secondly, Jesus disturbed the religious establishment and traditions of the time. He took people back to the heart of a real relationship with God. One not based in rules and regulations, but in the love of God for us being received and shared with others. More than that, he even disturbed the understanding of what love is. True love, Jesus says, is to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Love isn’t about getting what we want, love is about giving ourselves away, and denying ourselves. We should stay alive to the possibility that our rules and traditions need disturbing, especially if they are getting in the way of sacrificial love.
Thirdly, Jesus disturbed the world by comforting the disturbed. He reached out to those on the edge of society, the weak, the disabled, the sinner, the widow. Those who were counted least, he spent time with, he listened to, he valued, he loved. By doing this he challenged the values and systems of the world that he lived in. We can do the same. We can choose not to be sucked into the patterns of this world, we can disturb the received wisdom by doing things differently.
So, if that’s the who and what we are to disturb, what about the How? How are we to be disturbing?
Disturbing can carry a sense of being creepy or inappropriate. We must avoid this at all costs in our demeanour and attitude. Again, we look to Jesus, and to the early church. As I read this account in Acts it strikes me that the disciples were winsome, polite, and respectful. They weren’t looking for a fight, they were being faithful and obedient, not judgemental, but clear about the reality of the situation as they saw it.
A great modern example of this is the non-violent resistance of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement in the US. Refusing to give up a seat on a bus. Accepting beatings and water cannon hosings. Taking up school places in newly desegregated schools. Disturbing the unjust status quo with courage, strength, and perseverance.
As I come to a close, I have a question for us to consider. Will we invite the Holy Spirit to disturb us, to fill us with such love and compassion that we are moved to change the way that we live, the way that we behave, and to go out with courage to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable?
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